Well here we are at the final home game of another reasonably successful season with Rovers hopefully finishing in the top half of League 1 – a vast improvement on just four years ago! I suppose most of us were hoping that the team would have finished at least a couple of places higher than last season and that might just still be possible at the time of writing, (before the visit of the already promoted League leaders Wigan Athletic), although a very stiff end to the campaign makes that highly unlikely. Nevertheless the lads have consolidated our status as a proper League 1 club and the future looks bright to me as long as we can keep hold of our management team and those players that they want to continue the team-building with.
Some improvements will of course be necessary as Rovers have blown both very hot and very cold on occasions in the last nine months and the team has performed better against the top sides whilst not always getting the results they perhaps deserved. We have generally been very good at home and there have been some fine achievements on the road such as the six goals at Sixfields, the victory at Craven Cottage and that fine display at Wolves when Rovers became the fist side to prevent the eventual Championship winners from scoring and winning at home in ninety minutes. There have been downsides especially on our travels that beg questions like will we ever win at Rochdale or Gillingham?
The Supporters Club has continued our sponsorship of the Under-18 Academy and also taken under our wing some big funding for our new Under-23 Development squad which, at the time of writing, still has a great chance of winning the Central League at its first attempt. On the whole I feel we have much to look forward to in August!
Enjoy the break and we’ll see you all back here, no doubt for a ‘friendly’ in July!
Jim Chappell.